YEP Letters: February 12

In response to the news that the Leeds children’s heart surgery unit is likely to stay open (YEP, February 6), I would like to share my experience.

I’d heard about the unit being under review and thought it was a shame. Little did I know it would change my life and my daughter’s life forever.

Imogen was born at the LGI on December 30, 2010 and showed no signs of any abnormalities.

I brought her home and at six-months-old she was always full of cold, pale and sweaty. I took her to A&E.

A doctor said an emergency heart scan was needed and within minutes a doctor from the heart unit raced to the ward with a scanner.

I was told she was in the last hours of her life and had a rare heart condition called Cor Triatriatum. She needed to be put on life support.

They wheeled her into the heart unit straight away and she was surrounded by doctors and heart surgeons all discussing the best plan to save Imogen’s life.

They kept her alive through the night, trying to stabilise her so she would have a chance of surgery.

At 8am they wheeled her across to the operating theatre and worked on her little heart all day. She had open heart surgery and a pacemaker fitted, then went back into intensive care.

Imogen had a 24-hour nurse who did not leave her side until another nurse took over. The doctors and surgeon came in through the day.

She was moved back to the general heart ward, where nurses were again on hand day and night. Imogen left nearly three weeks later with no pacemaker and only a bottle of Calpol.

They said again and again that if Imogen had needed to go to another hospital she would have died as she barely made the journey across the corridor.

This was an emergency case, not carefully planned heart surgery, and was performed to the highest level.

They said they would do everything they could to save my little girl and they did.

Without the Leeds heart unit I would be grieving every day for my baby girl.

Thanks to them, Imogen is bright, full of life and a girl who has a future.

Right to expose cost of PFIs

A Hague, Harehills

CONGRATULATIONS TO Vernon Wood for his letter about quangos and PFI (Your Feedback, January 26), praising the policy of the new YEP in exposing the biggest robberies under the sun to our taxpayers which can last for 30 years, even if the object concerned becomes obsolete.

These schemes cost us many millions and whether a proposed station or something else goes ahead or not, we are still paying for it by PFI.

This method of buying has increased by over 10 per cent since the Government came into power.

Threat of more village chaos

Rosemary Nattriss, Church Fenton

Anyone else want a share of Church Fenton? HS2 has staked a claim with my home and much-loved garden threatened with demolition.

Chaos is predicted as the present railway line is electrified, with disruption for farmers trying to move round their land within the village.

Now the thought that the airbase might be a good substitute for Leeds-Bradford Airport at Yeadon (Your Feedback, February 10).

More farmland would go for road widening to reach the existing rail and road links and probably more homes would have to be demolished.

What else can happen? Fracking? Mining? One threat at a time please. HS2 is enough to be going on with.

Too dark for charity callers

D Vickers, Horsforth

I WRITE with concern for the ladies from the RSPCA who call at 8pm at night.

When they knocked on our door it was very dark and it was a young lady on her own. In the world we live in she could be putting herself in danger.

Plus, who wants to open doors to strangers at 8pm? This is not the way to canvass for support at all.

A brief respite from the angst

Terry Maunder, Kirkstall

I WALK up to the local shops and wonder why, in a relatively prosperous country, so many people treat their environment and others so badly.

Dog mess everywhere. Cans and bottles stuck in people’s hedges.

The sole topic of conversation in a group of young mothers, as I draw money out of the cash machine, is Facebook and how so-and-so’s husband is going to give someone “what for” for some utterly unimportant message that has been posted.

The language in front of young children is appalling. As is the car driving and the volume of the car radios/stereos.

I buy the YEP, get home and turn to the letters page. In eight years of reading it (since moving here) I’ve grown to enjoy this page and have had a number of letters printed, often about the important issue of mental health and mental illness.

Good grief, though, I wasn’t expecting this. A letter by Malcolm Nicholson about a government radio weather warning made me laugh out loud (Your Feedback, February 10). So thanks for relieving my existential angst momentarily, Malcolm.

Grouse shooting certain to go on

Ernest Lundy, Beeston

Regardless of whether or not Bradford Council impose a ban on grouse shooting on Ilkley Moor, it is certain to continue.

A spokesperson in favour puts forward the view that the elimination of pests and predators can do nothing but good. Those against say the biodiversity of all wild creatures is a natural state and should not be interfered with for the sake of one species and the pleasure of a few.

Speaking on the same subject, another person did the cause no good when he said: “The harvesting of a few birds annually that have been free on the moors is a much better situation than that suffered by battery fed hens”. A silly and ridiculous analogy.

For those of us who may be undecided which view to take, whether on ‘Ilkla Moor Bah’t ‘at’ or not, it is certain that, left alone, nature has ways of looking after itself.